Going back to school is difficult to explain to someone who has never worked inside one. It’s like looking out into the ocean and barely seeing the surface.
We are not simply going back to work. We are returning to spaces where we are asked to teach, lead, listen, plan, mediate, advocate, solve problems, and hold entire communities together, often while navigating systems that can demand more than they adequately resource or support.
I return tomorrow as an assistant principal, and I can already feel the shift.
I am also returning to the classroom as a professor. On Tuesday, I meet the graduate students in my Foundations of Bilingual and Multicultural Education course, and in mid-September, I welcome my undergraduate students studying how to teach emergent bilinguals. I am genuinely excited to learn alongside both groups for my 5th year. It is genuinely surreal to think this is my fifth year as an AP and professor!
The mental lists have started. The calendar is filling. I am thinking about what must be ready, who may need support, and which decisions will soon need to be made. There is excitement, but there is weight, too. And on this Sunday, the Sunday scaries are real.
I am sending love to the educators who have already returned and are already deep in the work. To my fellow NYC educators who officially return September 8: enjoy these final days without guilt. Rest is not something we should have to earn through exhaustion.
I also want to recognize those who will enter their buildings early to arrange classrooms, organize materials, and create welcoming spaces before their contracted start date. That care is real, and so is the unpaid labor behind it. We can appreciate educators’ devotion without romanticizing a system that regularly depends on people giving more time, money, and energy than their positions require.
Educators are often praised for doing “whatever it takes,” but liberation asks us to question who benefits when sacrifice becomes an expectation. Caring for students should not require abandoning ourselves. Commitment should not mean accepting impossible workloads, inadequate resources, or the belief that setting a boundary makes us less devoted.
As I begin my 5th year in school leadership, I want to help cultivate the magic and joy our communities deserve. I also want that joy to be sustainable. That means building structures of shared responsibility, listening to the people closest to the work, protecting one another’s humanity, and refusing the idea that burnout is proof of dedication.
If returning feels heavier than simply going back to work, you are not imagining it. You understand what this work demands and you may also recognize what needs to change.
So let us enter this year with care and critical hope: care for our students, families, colleagues, and ourselves, alongside the courage to challenge the conditions that make care so difficult to sustain. It is also necessary to have boundaries with our work load and personal life, give yourself grace.
May we build schools where no one person must carry everything, where boundaries are respected, and where collective care is practiced rather than merely praised.
CALL TO ACTION ✨
Let’s do this together. Before the school year begins, write a letter to the educator you’ll be on the final day before summer break. Name one hope for your students, one hope for yourself, one boundary you want to protect, one source of joy you want to nurture, and one responsibility you refuse to carry alone.
Date it, put it somewhere safe, and read it again on the last day of school. Notice what grew, what changed, and what you’re ready to release.
In community, care and solidarity,
Dalila
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